Also known by her unofficial cult following in England as Sitha by domestics there, Zita of Lucca (†1227) whose feast is celebrated today was servant girl to a cruel household that beat and berated her incessantly despite working hard and without stint and her charity and even respect for the family she worked for.
One of a number of Roman celebrated during this time of year to ensure a good growing season and bountiful harvest, the feast of the for the god Robigus was held on this day in the agricultural outskirts of the city.
The god, which was designated as the divine representation of fungal blight or rust needed to be propitiated in order to ensure that the crops wouldn’t spoil in the fields. Understood as a separate, corrupt manifestation of the same infestation that could be harnessed for fermentation, the games held at this time with their attendant feasts (see also) were also marked by rather dark sacrifices that expressed their anxieties over crop failure—especially for one this late in the growing seasons that wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Whereas animal sacrifice generally was reserved for livestock that was part of the Roman diet and was shared in a communal meal, Robigalia rather gruesomely demanded a dog with a red coat—that matched the rust disease—as form of homeopathic magic.
Other observations included a celebration of—for whatever reason—of male sex-workers, professional female prostitution having had their own honours in the previous days, specifically on Vinalia urbana, the grape harvest on 23 April. Though without the cruel bits, thankfully—or the fun bits either, I suppose, the holiday is preserved in Western Christianity with the same day of prayer and fasting known as Rogation (from the Latin to beseech—to ask God for protection from calamity) and was done to cleanse the body and mind in anticipation of the Ascension and farmers often had priests bless their crops, often holding mass and processionals in the fields.
Via the always engaging Everlasting Blรถrt, we find ourselves educated in the rather fascinating and sensical history of the Roman taxation scheme on human urine. Left to mellow and oxide, the substance undergoes a chemical transformation into ammonia not only useful for nitrogen-fixing in fertilisers but also as a cleaning-agent and detergent for laundry, oral hygienic and the dyeing of textiles. 
Levied during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian, the collection garnered the titular phrase that money does not stink, though the onerous and unpopular Vectigal Urinรฆ soon garnered detractors and has the lasting legacy in the public pay-toilets in some Romance-language places—France, Italy and Romania—referring to urinals, pissoirs as vespasiennes. The emperor’s son Titus objected to funding the Empire by such means and presented him with a gold coin, asking does this offend—to which Titus replied in the negative, “Atqui ex lotio est”—Yet it comes from the cesspool.
Via the always interesting Things Magazine, we are directed towards an appreciation and celebration of the life and work of the recently departed French engineer and automobile creator Robert Opron (81932), head of the design department at Citroรซn since 1964 and then working with Renault in 1975—headhunted to develop an ultra-compact city car concept before transferring to Fiat and Piaggio a decade later. 
Custom coachbuilt Citroรซn Presidentials were commissioned for Queen Elizabeth’s state visit in 1971 as well as this clever CX camera car for the BBC were Opron’s doing and his whole line of models were visionary and iconic whilst working with the major French and Italian manufacturers. 
Opron’s most innovative and unconstrained design was for the smaller Fiat spin-off Simca with his first foray in 1958 in the bubble-topped, roving UFO called the Fulgur—Latin for lightening. Responding to an industry challenge to create a vehicle for the 1980s, this two-wheeled, gyroscopically-balanced concept (“idea”) car was to be—though not in the demonstration car—was to be guided by radar, voice-controlled and atomically-powered. More from the obituary at the link above.
Venerated on this day—the occasion of his death at the then very advanced age of ninety-one in 1507 (*1416), the friar from Calabria was later appointed patron of his home region at the toe of Italy, Panama, ferrymen, mariners and naval officers for famously refusing to pay a boatman for passage and using his own cloak and staff as a sail and mast and crossing to Sicily under his own power, Francis of Paola also went on to establish the mendicant order known as the Minims. 
Membership including the botanist monk Charles Plumier who first encountered the fuchsia plant and a cloister in Mรผnchen who continues to brew Paulaner beer though they were expelled from the order for not following the rule that they should subside on charity and alms alone. Known for their humility, their name referring not only to the last among the faithful but also to the idea of having minimal impact, Francis—himself the namesake of St Francis of Assisi—advocated to keep the diet of Lent year round and ate no animals or animal products, vegan in modern parlance. Another legend recounts resurrecting a favourite trout, Antonella, who was caught and cooked by an unthinking brother who tossed out his dish once he saw how upset Francis was getting over a fish. Antonella, with some divine intervention, became whole again, swimming happily in the pond, and convinced the whole friary to abstain.
Though ostensibly informed by the Brutalist movement, this experimental vacation home, a concrete treehouse in the seaside town of Fregene outside of Rome, was meant as a statement about organic architecture and a statement of co-existence. 
Also known as Casa Albero, it was built by a family of architects, Uga de Plaisant and her husband Giuseppe Perugini with the assistance of their son over the course of seven years in the late 1960s, the structure has been abandoned and fallen into ruin, tragically. Explored by a group of urban spelunkers, here’s a short drone fly-through of the property. Hopefully this extra attention will inspire someone to save it. Much more at Things Magazine.
Reigning for a scant nine weeks, Didius Julianus was the second to hold imperial office during the Year of the Five Emperors (see previously), submitting the winning bid and acclaimed by the Prรฆtorian Guard on this day in the year 193 as the elite troops auctioned off the throne, having just assassinated the previous incumbent Pertinax. 
A promising government and military career sidelined by Emperor Commodus—ostensibly afraid that the prรฆtor in charge of Mogontiacum (see link above)—Didius Julianus was recalled from Dalmatia and Germania Inferior and put on tax-collecting and charitable duties and never quite recovered from this impolitic slight but for the bargain of promising each soldier twenty-five thousand sesterii (๐, the silver coin having the purchasing power of a sextarius, roughly half a litre of good wine or a little more than double a year’s pay) he was able to restore his honour. Rivalry amongst generals angry to see high office sold ensured civil war and competing claims and Didus Julianus did not help his popularity by immediately reversing monetary policy which significantly devalued the currency, and was executed in the palace on 1 June by a soldier. His successor Severus disbanded the Prรฆtorian Guard and the Senate passed a damnatio memoriรฆ motion to erase his legacy and strike his rule from history.
Acclaimed by the Praetorian Guard as emperor in the West on this day in 238—a year later labelled by history as the Year of the Six Emperors (see also)—and reluctantly confirmed by the Roman senate who did not find the prospect of putting an oafishly large barbarian bandit in charge, Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus “Thrax” would rule for three years, the first to attain such the pinnacle of government without coming from the elite classes of the Senฤtus or knights eques. 
Thrax’ tumultuous reign is considered to have set in motion the Crisis of the Third Century which eventually led to its downfall and dissolution in the West and ruled mainly from Mogontiacum, capital of Germania Superior along the Rhein and from the province of Israel, where there is archaeological evidence of starting on some infrastructure work with an unfinished roadway, never able to come to Rome herself. Paranoid and focused on consolidating power inciting accusations and cultivating a court of informers, Thrax doubled soldiers’ pay and waged continuous warfare—financing these policies through raising taxes and appropriation of church property and violent confiscations, earning almost universal distrust from those outside of the army and his inner circle. Marching on Rome in May of 238, Thrax was assassinated by his own troops at a camp outside the city walls at Aquileia, the gates closed to the advancing siege of the unpopular emperor by order of the senate, the soldiers disaffected and suffering from privation with taking the fortified city not as simple of a matter that they had been led to believe.
Though speculation and debate has continued for centuries, shifting from one camp to another with the present academic consensus rejecting the Shakespearian conceit that an unmitigated reaction to being assassinated would have been in Latin, scholarship has Julius Caesar (previously here and here) speaking Greek ฮบฮฑแฝถ ฯฯ, ฯฮญฮบฮฝฮฟฮฝ; (And you child?) with a somewhat different landing than Et tu Brute? 
The latter is only attested to in the Middle Ages and in accordance with Roman custom, it would have been more honourable, in the case of the former with Caesar being a long-time romantic companion of Servilia—mother of Marcus Junius Brutus—to have him die silently as a soldier. Some academics say it was misheard and more likely Caesar said “Tu quoque, fili mi?”—which is closer to the Greek—or “Quรฆso te, non!” –Stop it, please! and even the playwright seems to acknowledge the debate or unknowable nature of it with the earlier idiom in the tragedy, It’s all Greek to me, said by Casca to Cassius on Cicero and the co-conspirators, “…but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part it was Greek to me.” It is perhaps doubtful that even a great orator could summon the wherewithal to deliver some famous last words after being stabbed twenty-three times by a mob of mutinous senators. Despite the line’s purchase on popular culture, even within the framework of the play itself, the last utterance before expiring is “Then fall, Caesar.”
di grattacielo con le bretelle: Milan’s Brutalist Torre Velasca
razor banks: the rather macabre antique bathroom wall slots to dispose of dull blades in the voids between walls
through the looking glass: vis-ร -vis the above, a tenant finds hidden rooms behind her medicine cabinet in her New York City apartment—via Super Punch
superior mirage: walker in Cornwall spots a ship floating aloft
in your bubble: contemplating quarantine in the Bolwonigen globes of ‘s-Hertogenbosch—see previously
Spelunking through the Atlas Obscura archives with Boing Boing (always an advisable pursuit) we discover the glorious albeit short-lived Italian broadcast satanic variety show Stryx from the autumn of 1978. 
Featuring performances by Amanda Lear, muse to both David Bowie and Salvador Dalรญ, Grace Jones and Patty Pravo, a diva whose signature look was an homage to the above Bowie, the show was a departure from the usual milquetoast affair that made up most TV variety hours hosted by the devil himself with goblins, mock torture and sacrificial rites, medieval tropes and gratuitous nudity. Stryx was cancelled with only six episodes broadcast with only a few music segments surviving. More clips are available at the links above.
The early Baroque adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice by composer Claudio Monteverdi and librettist Alessandro Striggio premiering on this day in Mantua in 1607 to ring in Carnival season and L’Orfeo is considered one of the first true and fully developed operas.
Marking the end of a nine-day festival honouring familial ancestors called Parentalia (dies parentales, ancestral days), as historian and poet Ovid records in his book on Fasti, Romans across the Empire were prohibited in worship of the gods and instead were to visit the tombs of their departed and lay wreaths and leave offers of violets, salt and wine-soaked bread. 
More elaborate votives were permitted but this was sufficient to appease the spirits and the practice was strictly enforced, lest Rome return to a time when Ferฤlia was neglected and restless ghosts haunted the streets. As with most Roman holidays, observance was mostly a domestic, private affair and what public rites were held are an obscured and confused accounting, the only surviving description involving a drunk woman holding seven black beans (see also) in her mouth and lighting incense over the grave of a mouse, and sewing shut the mouth of a fish—then proclaiming, “Hostiles linguas inimicaque uinximus ora,” I have gagged spiteful tongues and muzzled unfriendly mouths.
